Alyse Bensel

I’m a smaller woman than I used to be smaller-minded, too and generous with myself pouring coffee licking banana bread batter staining my hands with graphite

I cherish carbon-on-carbon the kind of action you’d like to seeshedding cells mixed with mite dust and pollen

my castoff life is leftovers I forget to slough off in the mornings I’m trying to reabsorb the world

take on mass and give my flesh a thrill from the inside out— those gaps where you’re still there

digging in, dirty fingernails and all that suppleness attempting to push away and down

DO NOT CONSUME RAW

At Target I browse the seasonal produce, eyeing the warning label on the shrink-wrapped rhubarb.

I think about tearing open the package right thereand chewing the stalks like a cow with her favorite cud.

Those precautions signal the kind of rage in me that ends with me screaming in my car. Sometimes

I let the man I’m seeing in there with the soundto see if he’ll stick around. They all have—it’s usually

something, or someone else. I always have anotherlined up next, like I’m playing pinball and have

50 cents handy for each silver ball. A thousand quarters, that many scoreless turns.

I push the button as many times as I can. I poke holesin the plastic. I want the rhubarb to age, the balls to keep

moving. I’m tired of trying to pause time. One of thesedays I’ll stop with the night cream, face masks,

hemp lotion, argan oil, BB and CC and SPF. I need exposure to speed up the process. Rinse. Repeat.

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Alyse Bensel’s poems have most recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Zone 3, burntdistrict, New South, Bone Bouquet, and elsewhere. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks Not of Their Own Making (dancing girl press) and Shift (Plan B Press) and serves as the Book Reviews Editor at The Los Angeles Review. A PhD candidate in creative writing at the University of Kansas, she lives in Lawrence.